1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to networked document scanners, and more specifically relates to providing availability for a document scanner on a network when the network is not available.
2. Discussion of Related Art
Rather than creating offices that are purely paperless, companies have been creating tools that allow paper-based documents to better integrate with electronic documents. One such tool is a document scanner, which scans a paper-based document with a number of pages into an electronic document with a number of images. The document scanner may be networked, so that the document scanner can send a scanned document to a destination computer. The “destination computer” stores the scanned document at least temporarily, and may comprise a server, a personal computer, a computing device, and/or a scan server that performs post-scan processing, etc. The scan server may forward a scanned document to another server, computer, or device.
A user may log into the document scanner by providing login information. The “login information” may comprise any information for the user to log into the document scanner and/or to access the document scanner. The login information may be provided by user input including keypad entry, card/badge reader, biometrics, etc. Based on the login information, the document scanner may contact a directory server to authenticate that the user is authorized to use the document scanner and/or the scan server. The document scanner may also identify a number of scan environments from the directory server that the user is authorized to use. A “scan environment” may include information about scan settings (such as scan resolution for physically scanning a document), the destination computer, and/or filter for processing a scanned image, etc. The user selects one of the scan environments and proceeds to scan the document by pushing a scan button (or other common user interface). The document scanner may identify the scan server from the selected scan environment, and send the scanned document to the scan server along with the selected scan environment. The scan server may then perform additional processing, and forward the processed document to a file server, a computer or computing device, and/or an e-mail box based on the selected scan environment.
However, the network may not be available for some reason. The network is not “available” if the document scanner cannot communicate with a directory server and/or a destination computer. For example, the network is considered not available even if the subnetwork on which the document scanner resides is working, but the subnetwork on which the scan server resides is disconnected or not working. This unavailability is often a temporary condition. The document scanner thus may not be able to authenticate the user and/or identify scan environments from the directory server while the network is not available. The document scanner also may not be able to send the scanned document to the Destination computer. In these scenarios, present techniques used in scanners typically delete the scanned document. If the scanned document is not deleted, the document scanner typically cannot proceed with scanning a next document, making the document scanner unavailable for use. Meanwhile, the user or other users may have additional documents that need to be scanned. The present techniques impose a burden on users to retry scanning documents later when the network is available again.
There is thus a need to provide availability for the document scanner when the network is not available.